Ever After (34 page)

But Gwen, lying awake while the small hours of Sunday morning ticked away, was waiting in a kind of frozen patience for the end of the world. Somehow she had got through the day with composure. Somehow she had shared without tears the loving tempest of Fitz’s farewell when at last they were alone together, and now he slept, still holding her in the hard, possessive circle of his left arm. She lay quiet, her head on his shoulder, more aware of the strong, steady beat of his heart than of her own. Desperately she drew even now on her waning self-control, forcing herself not to clasp him convulsively and sob out her grief and terror while he was still there to comfort her. Even more than she needed the reassurance he would give if she woke him, she wanted him to have his rest, the last good sleep in a good bed he would get in nobody knew how long.

She had always fought her battles alone, and now she fought this one the same way, while dawn greyed the edges of the room—fought and fell back drearily into those last ditches of fortitude where there is nothing left but: I’ve had it—it’s mine for ever—nothing can take away from me what I’ve
had
—I can be thankful for that—I must be glad I’ve got it to lose…. And flinching closer to him in her extremity, she felt the instinctive jealous tightening of his arm as she stirred, and held her breath until she was sure he had not roused after all….

W
HEN HE WAS VERY YOUNG AND SOMEWHAT GIVEN TO HERO-WORSHIP,
Bracken had been inclined to feel hard done by that there was so much peace in the world and hence so little opportunity for him to distinguish himself as an intrepid Special scoring endless scoops as he was sure his father had always done during the war between the North and South. When he happened to mention this state of mind to Cabot, he was taken severely to task and informed that any
correspondent
during the late hostilities who had thought only of beating the other papers to a good headline was usually guilty of giving
information
to the enemy and deserved to be shot like a spy. And then Cabot’s ears got red and his oratory had suddenly run down, as he remembered with a shock of real surprise, after all these years, that the word Spy was pretty personal to himself and might be better left out of the discussion.

Now Bracken had got his own war. He viewed it with mixed feelings, where only a short time ago it would have caused him
undiluted
joy. He and Cabot had so far regarded the Cuban rebellion hard-headedly, without any glorifying mist of the traditional
ready-made
American sympathy for any life-and-death struggle anywhere for the thing called Liberty. They recognized clearly that, unlike the wars in which their family had taken part in the past, it had been agitated by expatriates, politicians, and financial interests
without
many altruistic spirits among them. They had beheld with disgust the cheap sensationalism of the American yellow press, and had retreated from it into a perhaps too Olympian detachment.

Bracken’s own experience in Cuba had changed that viewpoint. He had seen for himself the most sickening evidence of barbarism on both sides. He had come back convinced that after two years of
insurgent
activity famine would have been imminent anyway, even without the Spanish reprisals. He resented the success with which the sponsors of the patriot cause had contrived to pin the
responsibility
for suffering entirely on the Spanish Army. He believed that by pouring food and supplies into the island America might nullify
the starvation tactics of both sides and bring about a solution
without
resorting to armed intervention. There had already been fighting enough, of the sort which he considered a civilized world had now outgrown. But if Spain hindered the distribution of those supplies, or if no autonomous Cuban government proved strong enough to keep order—then America must go in with bigger guns, bigger ships, a more efficient and harder-hitting military force than anything Spain could put into the field. In any case the thing must be cleaned up. At once.

Before the paper could launch its own campaign along these lines, the
Maine
went down.

While the Board of Inquiry sifted evidence in
the secret sessions on the revenue cutter
Mangrove
in Havana harbour, the insurgents continued to demonstrate their right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness by burning cane-fields and dynamiting trains within sight of the city. Cabot’s opinion that the
insurrectos
had blown up the
Maine
for the sake of the advantages they would reap from American intervention had now been voiced by other reliable sources. The chief question it raised was whether the patriot forces would have had the equipment or the technical knowledge to accomplish such a thing. Bracken bought innumerable drinks for talkative harbour rats and dock workers at Havana, his Spanish improving daily with use as he pursued his investigations into the possibility that the mine had been exploded by a plunger hidden somewhere along the shore and manipulated by one or more insurgents who had then concealed the length of wire which remained and disappeared from the scene. But so far his catch-question, sprung suddenly when the chosen
witness
was well fuddled and full of bonhomie—What did you do with the wire?—had met only the blank stares of innocence and
non-comprehension
. Somewhere, Bracken was sure, there was a man who knew what had been done with the wire. And if he said, “We sank it,” or “It’s in so-and-so’s warehouse”—why, then, the
Star
was on the right track.

By the time he attended Miles’s birthday party, Bracken was convinced that no matter who had sunk the
Maine,
as a symptom of the unbridled terrorism and disorder in Cuba it called for drastic action. When he returned to Tampa with Cabot and Fitz the blockade of Havana had begun and the first shot had been fired—at an astonished Spanish merchantman, unaware of war, which had been promptly boarded by a prize crew and brought into Key West.

Everybody rushed down from Tampa to see her, and Fitz was
introduced
to the dispatch boat, which had been left in charge of the excited cub named Wendell when Bracken went to Williamsburg. The kid had cabled a very fair story about the departure of the Fleet on the night of the twenty-second—the ships showed no lights
except the Ardois signal lamps flashing red and white on the masts, and there was the scurry of launches to and from the outer anchorage seven miles off shore. He had also seen and recorded the capture of the Spaniard outside Key West. He received Cabot’s praise modestly, and would now act as second in command to Fitz, which would leave Bracken free first of all to make a voyage in a torpedo boat as an experience. Davis and Scovel had already snagged the coveted post on the flagship, where they would presumably be completely in the know and see everything.

Fitz’s boat, as she was henceforth known in the family, was a
none-too
-well-found little sea-going tow-boat with a bold sheer and a speed of ten knots if she was scared. She wore the name of Daisy in black letters on her grimy bow. She was a wet boat, and always flooded her galley in a blow, so that you had to subsist on
hardtack
and sardines. At other times her black cook broiled a very fine pompano, or made turtle soup, and there was guava jelly or some such tropic delicacy.

She was the best Bracken could do in the scramble back in February when all the newspapers at once had begun to charter all available small craft, and he maintained sourly that she was better than a Key West sponging schooner or a degenerate yacht. She had probably been a filibuster boat running arms to the insurgents before she joined the staff of the
Star.
It was convenient for a
tow-boat
to carry unknown cargo to unknown destinations—she could always show a wrecking license if questioned, and say that she was going to a rescue and mustn’t be detained. When she slipped back into port some days later with her coal bunkers empty and nothing to show for her run it was sometimes awkward for her captain, who in the Daisy’s case was a battered Swede, subject to opportune attacks of deafness on top of knowing very little English.

Whatever her past, the Daisy was now respectable, and was always spoken of without the article. “Take Daisy down to the flagship today,” Bracken would say, during the lull while the Fleet lay ten miles off Havana with nothing much to do but chase blockade runners and wonder where Cervera had got to. Or—“Daisy and I thought we’d tail the Hearst gang today,” Fitz would remark, and Bracken would jibe at the company they kept.

Fitz was now wearing the correspondent’s regulation blue flannel shirt, khaki breeches and leggings, and wide slouch hat, with the yellow silk handkerchief which was the
Star’s
badge knotted loosely round his throat. His life with Daisy was not monotonous. It was their job to keep in touch with the blockading Fleet, remaining at sea for several days at a time till something happened to write about, and then racing for Key West in
any kind of weather to
reach the cable office.

Unable to exist for long without some form of music, Fitz had acquired a raffish Spanish guitar on which he accompanied himself with melodious effect during the long idle hours at sea. Young Wendell proved to have a very decent bass, and together they recalled all the songs they had ever heard, teaching each other the ones they did not both know. Wendell heard the whole score of the musical comedy and could soon sing it too, and he listened sympathetically to Fitz’s artless talk of Gwen and the surprising fact that she had chosen him, out of all the men she might have married, a pretty girl like that, and hadn’t raised a whimper when he left her in the lurch and came down to run Bracken’s boat for him.

They were known to all the Fleet by their minstrelsy and were welcomed by the other Press boats where everyone was bitterly bored, and they sang their way in and out of Key West and across the Florida Straits and back to the most spontaneous applause. Sometimes Fitz wondered if it was quite dignified, considering the
Star
and all, but Wendell reminded him that the Boss was not the kind to care about a thing like that so long as they didn’t overlook a story and nobody threw things at them.

Meanwhile Dewey took Manila in the far-off Philippines without a casualty. Cervera was known to have sailed eastward from Cape Verde and was due off the Atlantic Coast or the West Indies. A state of alarm existed from New England to Hampton Roads, where the flying squadron waited under Commodore Schley.

The Army was concentrating its thousands at Tampa, which had become the centre of interest to the Press after Admiral Sampson steamed out of Key West towards Puerta Rico to look for Cervera there. Tampa had begun to resemble a mammoth county fair, with the tents of the regiments laid out in military streets in the sandy wastes all round the town, and horse dealers from all over the U.S.A. bringing in their wares for sale and parading them before prospective buyers.

It was a crazy place anyhow, a collection of sagging wooden houses built upon sand at the end of a single railway track nine miles inland from its port. Wind-driven sand had worn away the paint from the buildings, sand blew across the sidewalks and buried them, sand seeped in around the doors and windows even when they were shut, sand was in your shoes and in your food and in your eyes.

In a disastrous and half-forgotten real estate enterprise avenues had once been laid out between the scrubby palmettoes and pines festooned with dreary hanging moss, and a large hotel had been built for winter tourists. The tourists never came. But now the Army and the correspondents and the foreign attaches in their colourful uniforms and the rich Havana refugees had come. It was the most incredible hotel, even if it had not stood fantastically in the middle
of a desert—a Byzantine palace built of ornamental brick. It was topped by silvered minarets, and fret-work columns supported its vast verandahs which jutted out in front of round, decorated arches above massive brass-studded doors leading to a colossal lobby and rotunda. Rugs, chairs, stuffed round sofas, potted palms, naked statuary, all strove without success to fill the luxurious void. There were electric lights, and bathrooms, and running water. Richard Harding Davis said it was like a Turkish harem with the occupants left out.

At first, it was true, there had been no women. Everybody gave up white linen and took to flannel shirts and comfortable neckerchiefs and sometimes forgot to shave—everybody but Dick Davis. There was a cheerful conviction that the Army would be moving out within a few days—well, next week at the latest. Time passed, and
everybody
was still sitting round in the fleet of rocking-chairs on the miles of verandahs, drinking gallons of iced tea and fanning themselves and greeting old colleagues they had not seen since Geronimo or Wounded Knee or Larissa or the Soudan. But now wives and daughters and sisters and aunts were sprinkled in the rocking-chairs behind the flowering vines, drinking iced tea and fanning themselves. That was much pleasanter, but it meant the Army was not going to move just yet. Gloomily the white duck suits and dress clothes were dug out of the trunks again, and razors were used. There was dancing in the grand ballroom in the evenings, with music by a regimental band, and coloured lights were strung along the
verandahs
. Mr. Davis, a cigar in
his teeth and a flower in his
buttonhole
, was heard to remark that war was certainly hell.

By mid-May General Shafter had arrived, in command of the Army. He weighed almost three hundred pounds, and wore a blue woollen uniform and a wide white sun helmet, and suffered visibly from the heat. Ten thousand men were encamped around the town, ankle-deep in dirty sand. Their water supply was deficient, and there was not enough tents and blankets in good condition. There was a plague of flies and mosquitoes. Tarantulas and centipedes frolicked through the men’s belongings with malign impudence. Typhoid fever and typhus-malaria were beginning to appear.
Supplies
, unlabelled; unsorted un-assigned, lacking invoices, filled droves of box-cars stranded all over Florida. Miss Clara Barton arrived, with her Red Cross nurses. General Fitzhugh Lee was there,
reminiscing
about Havana. English, French, German, Austrian, Russian, and even Japanese attachés matched stories and recalled old
acquaintance
over their tall, sweating tumblers. And finally Johnny Malone arrived in his regiment, tanned and elated and completely sober, telling in lively detail what he was going to do to the Spaniards. Young Miles Day was still at San Antonio with the Rough Riders.
There seemed to be nothing to do in the circumstances, Cabot said, but send for Eden and Virginia, who had remained at Williamsburg waiting to see what would happen. They brought with them
suitcases
full of frivolous presents and trunks full of beautiful summer clothes, and all the family’s love. A New York mail brought Fitz a letter from Gwen. Rehearsals were going well, and everybody said they had a hit. But if it hadn’t been for the show, he thought, she could have come to Tampa too. Well, no, there was Pa, who still had to be kept. But a Special Correspondent’s salary was big enough….